SOFREP Interviews Chelsea Walsh: The Nurse Who Reported Red Flags About Trump’s Would Be Assassin – Guy D. McCardle
You get to meet a lot of interesting people when you write for a site like SOFREP. One of those interesting people who I had the pleasure of talking with recently was Chelsea Walsh. Chelsea, a traveling nurse, was doing humanitarian work in Ukraine in 2022 when she met a character named Ryan Routh. If that name sounds familiar, it was the same Ryan Routh who plotted to kill President Trump on his West Palm Beach golf course in September of 2024. What makes Chelsea different from the scores of other Americans who met Routh during his time in Ukraine is the fact that his behavior in that warring nation was disturbing enough that she mentioned it at the airport upon returning to the United States to US Customs and Border Personnel.
Shortly after meeting him, Chelsea could tell that there was something that wasn’t quite right with Ryan Routh. She described Routh as a clown.
“He was the American clown of Ukraine. That’s why I explained to the officials, like everybody underestimated him because he looked like a clown and I always try to tell people don’t underestimate anyone. That’s the worst thing you could do is underestimate people.”
Routh (circled on the right with shades and blonde hair) and Walsh (circled on the left) in Ukraine, 2022. Image Credit: Chelsea Walsh
Routh, often seen literally wrapped up in the American flag, may have been a clown, but that does not mean he was not potentially dangerous. One night, Chelsea saw Routh kick a homeless Ukrainian man because he asked him for money. In her career as a nurse, she had dealt with several patients with different mental illnesses. “I know schizophrenia, I know bipolar, he wasn’t any of those.”, she said.
Walsh continued:
“So I knew he was a psychopath, and they’re kind of, they’re kind of rare to come across in life, I feel. And I was, like, this guy is one of them. This is what that looks like. This is him.”
Ryan Routh clad in his omnipresent American flag shirt with a painted face, in Ukraine, 2022. Image Credit: Rolling Stone
Routh was a walking contradiction in terms. He himself had very little money and was constantly asking Ukrainians for cash. He would take advantage of charities. Supposedly, Routh would approach the charities, say he was helping with donations for the front-line soldiers, and be given cash. In a war zone, there often isn’t a lot of accounting going on. Apparently, this is one of the ways Routh got money.
When the tables were turned, he literally gave a Ukrainian the boot and didn’t think twice about it. She said he didn’t care. Routh was without empathy. But, like a psychopath, Routh seemed to be good at manipulating others, at least at first. He had a thing about watching people, keeping tabs on what they were doing. Chelsea, quite understandably, found this to be disconcerting.
You get to meet a lot of interesting people when you write for a site like SOFREP. One of those interesting people who I had the pleasure of talking with recently was Chelsea Walsh. Chelsea, a traveling nurse, was doing humanitarian work in Ukraine in 2022 when she met a character named Ryan Routh. If that name sounds familiar, it was the same Ryan Routh who plotted to kill President Trump on his West Palm Beach golf course in September of 2024. What makes Chelsea different from the scores of other Americans who met Routh during his time in Ukraine is the fact that his behavior in that warring nation was disturbing enough that she mentioned it at the airport upon returning to the United States to US Customs and Border Personnel.
Shortly after meeting him, Chelsea could tell that there was something that wasn’t quite right with Ryan Routh. She described Routh as a clown.
“He was the American clown of Ukraine. That’s why I explained to the officials, like everybody underestimated him because he looked like a clown and I always try to tell people don’t underestimate anyone. That’s the worst thing you could do is underestimate people.”
Routh (circled on the right with shades and blonde hair) and Walsh (circled on the left) in Ukraine, 2022. Image Credit: Chelsea Walsh
Routh, often seen literally wrapped up in the American flag, may have been a clown, but that does not mean he was not potentially dangerous. One night, Chelsea saw Routh kick a homeless Ukrainian man because he asked him for money. In her career as a nurse, she had dealt with several patients with different mental illnesses. “I know schizophrenia, I know bipolar, he wasn’t any of those.”, she said.
Walsh continued:
“So I knew he was a psychopath, and they’re kind of, they’re kind of rare to come across in life, I feel. And I was, like, this guy is one of them. This is what that looks like. This is him.”
Ryan Routh clad in his omnipresent American flag shirt with a painted face, in Ukraine, 2022. Image Credit: Rolling Stone
Routh was a walking contradiction in terms. He himself had very little money and was constantly asking Ukrainians for cash. He would take advantage of charities. Supposedly, Routh would approach the charities, say he was helping with donations for the front-line soldiers, and be given cash. In a war zone, there often isn’t a lot of accounting going on. Apparently, this is one of the ways Routh got money.
When the tables were turned, he literally gave a Ukrainian the boot and didn’t think twice about it. She said he didn’t care. Routh was without empathy. But, like a psychopath, Routh seemed to be good at manipulating others, at least at first. He had a thing about watching people, keeping tabs on what they were doing. Chelsea, quite understandably, found this to be disconcerting.
This is taken from Routh’s Telegram account. That’s him in the image in the lower left. The message is likely regarding the photo shown above with the flags. One thing Chelsea told me was that Routh always put his contact information out there in some way. Here, we see his phone number. It’s no longer in service, so I’m not redacting it.
The obvious question to ask anyone who knew Routh is something along the lines of “Did he seem to be obsessed with Trump?”
“He talked about Biden a lot, and he talked about Trump, and he talked about Putin. Everybody talked about Putin. But I don’t remember specifically explicitly, I don’t remember something he said like ‘Oh, I’m gonna kill Trump one day’. I never remember hearing anything like that.”
That was my million-dollar question, and it was answered quite clearly.
“No, he was not obsessed with Trump.”
A Poem By Ryan Routh
Above, we get a peek into Routh’s thought process. Apparently, Routh put this poem to music and went as far as hiring local musicians and renting out a studio. When he was laughed at for doing this, he was incensed. Really pissed off. Chelsea remembers him saying something to the effect that,
“I’m going to burn that fucking music studio down because that guy, he laughed at me, and he laughed at the song I made for his country.”
Yes, she said. Routh was quite vengeful like that.
Ok, I thought. We’ve pretty much surmised that Routh was a vengeful psychopath who wasn’t obsessed with President Trump. Then why, I asked, do you think he tried to kill him?
She noted that “he was impulsive and volatile, but he was also able to get accurate, accurate information. He was able to verify and get accurate information on people.”
“He was calculated in a lot of shit that he did. So, I, like, don’t think he would have just shown up at that golf course. I think he would have done some scoping out or verifying some information somehow. But he would have, he would have made sure that that day he brought those plates and everything with him. That was the day he was definitely gonna show up…”
We discussed how fate intervened and saved Trump’s life from an assassin once again.
“But I think the Secret Service got him just in time, honestly, like, you know, people are putting them down and stuff, but I’m like, this time I think the Secret Service did a good job. It’s good that they caught him. I think that he would have pulled the trigger. I absolutely do without a doubt. Like, that’s what surprised me the most is that he didn’t pull the trigger. Like Ryan would have pulled the trigger without a doubt.”
We kept chatting about why Routh may have wanted to kill Trump.
“So why do I think he did this? He did this for either one of two reasons. He either did this to make a name and do a fucking crazy activist bullshit thing. So for the sake of notoriety or attention…or for suicide when he realized he really did hate his life and he wasn’t getting anywhere. It could have been both. He could have been doing it as, you know, an attempt to kill himself but also in an attempt to make a name for himself in some weird, fucked up way. But I don’t, I mean, I don’t think it was about Trump. I still don’t think it was about Trump. It was about him. He did this because of him.”
Summing Up
I agree 100% with Chelsea. I think Ryan Routh tried to kill President Trump to get attention for Ryan Routh. Presidential assassins and would-be assassins rarely have straightforward political motives. Instead, their reasons tend to be more complex and often rooted in personal issues. And Ryan Routh, my friends, had more issues than National Geographic.
They often struggle with deep feelings of inadequacy, chronic frustration and inability to achieve goals, social isolation and difficulty maintaining relationships.
Some of you may remember the name Arthur Bremer. He shot presidential candidate George Wallace back in 1972. When asked why, Bremer explicitly stated he wanted to be famous. I had never heard of Brember, and I guess you probably hadn’t heard of him either. I supposed he failed in his attempt to be famous.
John Hinkley Jr tried to kill Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. That never made an ounce of sense to me.
Many attackers fixate on the President of a candidate as a symbol of their personal frustrations. They may view their target as representing a “system” that failed them.
I’m no psychologist, but perhaps this is what motivated Ryan Routh. He was a failed American, but he felt he was somebody, and he desperately wanted other people to think he was someone as well. Throw in a bunch of psychopathy and a fistful of narcissism, and you have a potential assassin.
Routh in federal custody after the failed assassination attempt. Image Credit: New York Post
Today, we all know his name and his gaunt face. Maybe that’s what he wanted all along. He didn’t protest a bit when the feds arrested him. He did not try to shoot it out and go out in a blaze of glory. No, he wanted people to see him and learn his name, and we did.
Check out the smug look on his face in the photo above shortly after he was taken into federal custody. If you look into his eyes, you can almost see a sense of accomplishment.
In the end, Ryan Routh didn’t need a bullet to leave his mark—his face, his name, and his twisted legacy are now etched in infamy, proof that sometimes the most dangerous weapon is a man desperate to be remembered.
